Running My First Campaign and Want Opinion on My City Sheets

[Joelok314]

Hello All,

I'm an experienced DM when it comes to Dark Heresy, D&D, and other D20 RPGs. However, this will be my first campaign with FATE, let alone within the Dresdenverse. I just wanted to get some (hopefully constructive) opinions on the city sheet my players and I came up with.

Here is a link to the city sheets:
http://i.imgur.com/wpzKJBk.jpg

The sheets on the left are what I can see and the sheets on the right are what the players will see. I strayed a little from the process in the book. I had the players work together to make a city (in this case New Orleans). Then, once they were done, went back and changed a few things (some names, one or two locations, etc.). Nothing too big, but made sure that some of it would come as a surprise.

Then, I did some low grade editing. I kinda of did it like top secret files, but purposefully left some of the stuff only partially covered. So, if you look closely at the "blacked out" info, some of it can actually still be read. So, it kind of gives hints at what might come. I did the changes mainly so that they wouldn't know what is coming and where to expect it, but I kept all the elements of what they wanted the same.

Let me know what you guys think of the city, in general, and for my style of "hidden" threats and locations. Also, it would be good to note that none of the players have read the books. If you have questions about what something means, let me know as I want as informed opinions as possible.

Oh and it would probably help to see what kind of group there will be:

1) A Half-Troll Changeling who is a drunken bouncer on Bourbon Street. His player is definitely going to "troll it up".

2) A Half-Pixie Changeling from Summer. He is the child of a Pixie Noble (something of an oddity). Think Spike from Buffy and you've pretty much got his character style down. He also is a child of the 60's and 70's. If there is a drug that was popular during that time, he probably tried it. I have worked out that he might get Seelie Magic down the line if he can help acrue power for his sire in Faerie. He is human size for now.

3) A Were-Jaguar. He is a young man from a hidden aztec tribe out for his rite of manhood, in which his task is to hunt and kill a full Red Court Vampire. His player is more of a bash and smash kinda guy.

4) A Champion of God. He is fine with having nothing but the starting powers. His character is a no-nonsense old testament kind of guy who is trying to convert his companions and turn them away from their heretic lineage or powers. His character and the half-pixie will likely have the most plot interaction.

5) A Red Court Infected. His character is a Forensic Detective who is obsessed with curing humanity of mortality due to family loss. His character and the Were-Jaguar will likely have the most character interaction and the Were-Jaguar might try to trick him into becoming a full Vampire so that he can kill him and claim his prize.

[crusher_bob]

While I think the 'city sheets' are an ok tool to help the GM keep track of things, I think that they fall short of giving players who are just sitting down for the game an idea of how these things effect the setting and tone of the game.

Here's an example stolen from After Sundown
A Life in Horror: The Good and The Bad
“Interesting fact: The Final Girl trope emerged shortly after young women became a major component of horror movie attendees.”

Life for the common man in After Sundown is actually pretty horrible, and extremely dangerous. Life in After Sundown is life in a horror movie. Or rather, it is a world not unlike Earth would be if all the horror movies were real in different places and at different times. This means that body counts are extremely high, and it is very difficult to get help. This is good news if you happen to be the Bogie Man, but really bad for anyone looking for a life of vaguely normal properties. Here are some important things to remember:

The Police are no help at all.
Heavily infiltrated by cultists and secret societies, the police in After Sundown are astoundingly ineffective. Sure they will occasionally bring down a killer, but the vast majority of crimes go unsolved. Many crimes don't even get investigated, especially if something supernatural is afoot.

Telecommunications are Shoddy.
Sat Phones aren't generally available in the realm of horror. Cellphone coverage cuts out constantly at inopportune moments. Most people still have landlines, but regular telecommunication wires go down frequently and are out for days at a time. The inability to get a call out of a building or town isn't unusual, that kind of thing happens a lot in After Sundown.

People Don't Travel Much.
It's not weird for people to not know what goes on in the next town over in After Sundown. Things are just more dangerous, and people keep to themselves more.

Keep this in mind when you're planning your nights in the realm of horror. Life is less connected to other life in the realm of horror and it is much easier for dangerous elements to thrive in such an environment.

That being said, it is important to remember that most horror movies begin with people thinking things are pretty normal, and end with something of a return to normalcy as well (or do they?) So it's not like Jason is running around the streets murdering people left and right. Indeed, while the death rate from serial and mass murder is large enough in the realm of horror to compete with traffic accidents or opiate abuse, the fact is that you're still more likely to die from cancer. Supernatural creatures remain hidden and the president of the United States is openly a mundane human. A vampire can't just flash their fangs to get free entry to a movie theater, and indeed they could be in a lot of trouble if they flash their fangs in a public space of any kind.

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So notice how the aspects would be The Police are no help at all, People Don't Travel Much, and Telecommunications are Shoddy, but it's really the write up that ties them all together and tells you what they mean.

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It can really help to have a half page or one page writeup.

[Joelok314]

I think we covered that pretty well in the discussion beforehand. We covered what the city is like and how things actually work. We treated the city sheets like summary pages where we took all those ideas and "bullet-pointed" them for ease of access.

[dplanken]

Your locations seem like fun places to have epic conflicts in. So I'd say all in all you all did a great job designing it.

I'm not too thrilled about your Theme, it's seems like it is too easily gotten rid off. In my mind a theme is more permanent than the theme you guys have chosen. It's seems more appropriate as a threat. The threats you have noted down are great adventure material. Might also be fun to see if you can eventually have the Voodoo queen interact with the necromancer for bigger badder bads!

I like the creativity in your city sheets where you blackmarkish stuff out, but I can't help but wonder if you shouldn't give the normal rules a shot. It's hard for a seasoned GM in games like D&D and dark heresy where everything is hidden from the players, to suddenly throw everything out in the open. I didn't like it either, but in the end I'm glad I gave it a shot, because my players are having more fun with this way of playing than they had with any of the other games we played.

[Joelok314]

Yeah, I think that was my problem of transitioning from D20 where the story is a complete mystery to just laying it out there for all to see. None of us have tried a FATE game before and I wanted to kinda ease them into it, haha.

As for the Theme, I had a similar thought when we were doing city creation. They insisted that it be a theme, so I think they were treating it more as a fact of life that no one is willing to do anything about. They said it fit in the following category from the book:

Some themes are more specific to a
group in the city. A college town with a
notorious fraternity of wealthy troublemakers
might have “If the Beta Alpha
Chis want it, they get it.”


Since they wanted this to be the theme, I decided not to push. I'm imagining that the White Court Family has so entrenched themselves that they pretty much control both the government and the crime world. Kinda makes them harder to "remove". In essence they are the John Marcone of New Orleans. He's not really someone even Dresden could remove easily... In the end, I'm just justifying what the players wanted. *shrug*

Do you think that would work for a theme or shoudl we still need to make it a threat and come up with a different theme?

[dplanken]

The justification isn't bad actually. And if your players really wanted that, you should definitely keep it. Since they insisted on it, you can expect they'll treat it as an unavoidable fact of life, instead of a threat. So yeah then it works!   

[cold_breaker]

Actually, I think the build style is just as well. There's always going to be secrets that the PCs don't know, and secrets they do know. You're just integrating it into creation, wheras most of us keep it completely under our hats. The setting is just that: where the adventure takes place. It is far from being the adventure all on its own!

Personally, I have two threats that my players will eventually tackle: but I intend to milk those threats gradually over years, and introduce plenty of sub plots that are barely related to the city sheets. I suspect that the setting will end up being a whole lot darker than they originally envisioned when I'm done with them.